Opening with a group of Christian activists blessing the desks in the country’s National Congress Palace before the opening of a legislative session in 2016, the movie, which is now streaming on Netflix, charts the rapid rise of evangelical Christianity as a political force in Brazil. The daughter of pro-democracy activists and the granddaughter of one of the founders of one of the country’s largest oil companies, Costa has the kind of access filmmakers would kill for, and enough political intuition to have started filming Jair Bolsonaro, who was swept into Brazil’s presidency in 2019 on a wave of far-right populism, years before he was even a viable candidate. She pauses and rewinds, Zapruder-like, a clip of the speech when Bolsonaro, perhaps paraphrasing the book of Deuteronomy, tells a gathering of his followers to “Go fight, and I will be with you.” Given that the only other time in the film Bolsonaro cites chapter and verse is John 8:32 (“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free”), it’s a little surprising to see him departing from the Bible’s Wikiquotes page.
Author: Sam Adams
Published at: 2025-07-14 22:00:01
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